Mark Bruzee, 56, and David Roche, 54, met on their first day of algebra class at Cayuga Community College.

"We went down to the cafeteria, had a cup of coffee, started talking," said Bruzee, a volunteer at the New York State Fair's LGBT booth. "We became friends, we started doing similar functions at school and next thing I knew, we were falling in love."

They had known for a long time they wanted to be married, if just for legal recognition. The question was where. They looked at different places and were met with discomfort from some venue managers.

One night this summer, they were watching a news segment about upcoming concerts at the New York State Fair.

Suddenly Roche said, "Why don't we just get married at the state fair?"

So Bruzee sent an email to the fair administration, asking if that was possible. Troy Waffner, the fair's assistant director, congratulated them and said absolutely.

"What you expect the hurdles to be, have kind of just fallen away," Bruzee said. "I guess you could say it's our Andy Warhol moment. We're the first same-gender couple to do this, according to Troy. It's a very visible location, it's a nontraditional ceremony and, oh yeah, there's two guys, holding hands."

"We were sitting in front of the TV crying our eyes out," said Bruzee. "We didn't think it could happen. We really expected SCOTUS to screw us. We expected them to send it back to the appellate, because it was too much of a hot potato. I couldn't believe my government finally saw me as a human being."

DOMA, a federal law signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, defines marriage as between only a man and a woman. Section Three of DOMA limited a range of health and pension benefits to heterosexual couples, like the ability to file a joint tax return. In June, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA violated the U.S. Constitution's "equal protection" promise.

Two years earlier, Bruzee and Roche were at a cast party (they both work in theater and production) when someone announced New York made same-sex marriage legal. They were incredulous then, too.

"We sat there like, 'I can't take the enormity of this,'" Bruzee said.

Now they will have the first same-sex wedding on the NYS Fairgrounds in state history, this weekend.

Wedding Crashers

Bruzee doesn't know if anyone plans to protest his wedding, but he sees any heckling as an opportunity for discussion afterward.

"A crowd is a crowd, that's fine," Bruzee said. "I have everything the state requires. Gov. Cuomo has said so. President Obama has said so. It was put on paper. Now I can exercise that right. I can be a married man to my husband."

The response Bruzee hears most frequently from same-sex marriage opponents is tied to religion.

"If God didn't want there to be gay people, there wouldn't be gay people," he said. "If people say, 'Why did you do this?' It's because I'm in love. I have been for 32 years."

The only pre-wedding jitters Bruzee experienced were having expectations for pushback, and then not encountering any.

"Everyone has been so awesome, so supportive and so respectful," Bruzee said. "Even if they didn't quite agree, they were respectful in the way they did it."

The Big Day

Bruzee and Roche's morning wedding will take place on Saturday, August 31 at 10 a.m. by the NYS Fair's reflecting pool. The actual ceremony is short -- only five pages long. The entire wedding costs less than $500.

Linda Townsend of Auburn will officiate. She's known Bruzee and Roche for three decades and has watched their relationship grow from the start.

"I have seen this relationship go through things that would kill most straight relationships," said Townsend. "Of all the marriages I've done, this is the one I'd bet on. It's guaranteed. That's the difference with gay couples, they have to fight the world for it to work. That makes them much stronger."

Townsend said it felt "phenomenal" to preside over the first same-sex marriage in state fair history. Yesterday, Townsend received a letter from Gov. Andrew Cuomo specifically congratulating the couple. She plans to read it at the ceremony.

"It couldn't be better if it were plated in gold," Townsend said. "It was from [Cuomo], signed by him. I felt so good about that. Our governor came through."

Each member of the couple's wedding party will wear dark slacks and a solid color from the rainbow pride flag, in order.